


Genealogy

by cribbins



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alcoholism, Gen, It's just weird, OFC - Freeform, OMC - Freeform, PTSD, Some fucked up family dynamics, You Can't Go Home Again, except you can, post-A Study in Scarlet, pre-The Sign of the Four
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:46:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7467432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cribbins/pseuds/cribbins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson goes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Genealogy

The morning itself was a fine one - the tail-end of Autumn had produced a fine and mellow dawn; the mists were laying low to the ground outside, the sky was a hazy yellow, and Sherlock Holmes was in a drug-induced torpor on the sofa.

 

I had been resident of 221B Baker Street for three months, having been persuaded into the arrangement by the limp wreck of a man now lying in our shared drawing room.

 

After spending several moments staring at him, him quite insensible and I irritated beyond measure, I settled myself at the bureau with the paper and the morning post.

 

It had been six weeks since the same sleeping man had also persuaded me to accompany him in solving a double murder involving Mormons, mistaken identity and bloody messages scrawled onto the walls.

 

I had written this case up into an account, and it was to be published in a small brochure. I had titled it 'A Study In Scarlet'; a little outlandish maybe, but that was fitting, I felt.

 

The first letter that I opened that morning was my payment for this article. It would be published in the next few days, said the letter enclosed. It also intonated that they would be interested in seeing anything else I might write of the exploits of my fellow lodger. I looked down at Holmes (I was set upon using the drawing room for its intended use, even if Holmes insisted on using it as a bedroom), and determined that this particular chapter in his life would probably not live up to their expectations of thrilling adventure, and I may temporarily have to find alternative subjects.

 

Still, this payment for 'A Study in Scarlet', along with my army pension, would see me in good stead for a couple of months if I was willing to be uncharacteristically careful with it. I took a moment; looking down at the cheque in my hand I had the feeling of not just triumph, although there was plenty of that, but of endurance. I had proved that I had the wit and means of continuing forward and supporting myself. Holmes had supplied the content, but the skill of writing it was all my own, quite outside of soldiering and doctoring, not robbed of me by a Jezaii bullet.

 

Thus it was in that state of mind, drawing up plans, caught up in forethought of my newly considered future, that I opened up my second letter to be informed that my brother had died.

 

The letter was from my cousin, Frances, who laid out the facts in her own reasonable and concise way. He had been discovered in his garret in Edinburgh this day last, and the police had determined that he had died of complications arising from his drinking habit.

 

This was all at the same time a shock and, in a way, expected. I had played similar scenarios through my mind on previous occasions, where I had fretted over my brother's reliance on drink, but to see it in Frances' plain hand was another thing altogether. I put the letter down and collected myself. I now wished that I had taken these back to my bedroom rather than childishly insist on using the drawing room. Holmes was insensible, true, but I did not want Mrs Hudson walking in and seeing me in such a state.

 

And so I collected the letters and took them upstairs. The blood roared in my ears. I was acutely aware of the sensation of things; the sound of Mrs Hudson in the floor below, the feel of the bannister underneath my hand, the ache in my leg from an older war wound. This was the shock working through my system, I knew, and it was a distraction from the singular thought that span through my head: I had been back in Britain for more than four months and I had not once travelled to Edinburgh to see Henry.

 

The grief lay thick and heavy in me but the shame, the shame of it _burned_.

 

Frances' letter asked of me to make arrangements to come up presently. Henry's funeral would be within a few days, though they would delay as much as they could to see me there.

 

I read the letter once more and, with shaking hands, retrieved my brown leather valise from the top of the wardrobe and packed a few items, stopping half way through, felled by a surge of emotion that had managed to rush upon me.

 

Some hours later (this was after I had finished packing, washed my face, and felt quite in control of myself again), I heard the movements of Holmes stirring downstairs. He was currently one of the two people in London who would have to be told of my absence, and as I had earmarked a sleeper train to Berwickshire for that evening I was determined to put myself in order as quickly as I could.

 

I found Holmes somewhat groggy, on the sofa, pushing his hair back and flattening it against his head. I wondered what he must have thought about me seeing him in these curiously unguarded moments; he was, while something of a bohemian, notoriously proud.

 

He looked up to note me, the traces of whatever concoction he had indulged in evident in his face, still slightly slack. "Good afternoon, Watson." He all but croaked.

 

"Yes, well past morning." I said and could not fully keep the admonishment from my tone.

 

"Quite," Holmes adjusted himself of the sofa, crossed his legs and was once again fully himself, louche and easy, "and what wonders did this missed morning bring for us?"

 

Light as they were, his words had a curious effect on me and my answer stuck in my throat. I swallowed once and meant to try again, but Holmes had already caught the hesitation. "Ah, something? I landed quite the blow then. Yes Watson you're rather an open book I'm afraid, come man, what is it?" Holmes stopped for a moment and observed me. "Watson, you look as if you are about to give a confession!"

 

I sat on the arm chair. "I'm away, this very afternoon I'm afraid."

 

Holmes sat up a little. "So all of a sudden?"

 

"Yes it can't be helped."

 

"And do you know for how long?"

 

"I wouldn't be able to say," I said in apologetic tones, not sure how to address the nature of this journey, which would lead to more questions from Holmes, and with his perceptiveness the whole story would be out in a short matter of minutes. It was not that I thought Holmes judgemental of this sort of thing but it felt such a private matter, something too raw for exposure just yet.

 

My closed and distant demeanour though, the sense of guilt that now hung around me as a fog, that spelt a different story to Holmes, who presently became distant himself. He reached for today's Times from the little sidetable and examined the headlines. "Dull," he murmured to himself, but still opened the paper to an inner page. "I assume, Watson, that it was the payment from that article you have been writing that came in the post this morning?"

 

I blinked. "Why, yes, indeed it was. I did not know that you were aware I was writing an article?" I had kept my writing to my own room, free of glances over shoulders and meddling.

 

"A period of marked absence from the drawing room, ink over your fingers, after that correspondence with numerous publications. I will admit that I am the world's foremost consulting detective but even Lestrade would have been able to catch wind of something of the like." Homes tuned the page with an imperious flick of the hand. "And this cheque gives you the means of leaving London?" At this he looked up at me from over the top of the paper.

 

"It does, yes." I answered him.

 

"Very well, and indeed what is the point in wasting any time? I wish you the very best in your travels, Watson. I have heard that Scotland is very striking at this time of year."

 

I was startled. "Now look here Holmes, how you..."

 

Holmes quickly cut me off, austere and rigid from behind the paper. "...your accent. It's very good, mind you, but not perfect. It has a tendency to revert to type when under strain you know."

 

I knew when I was being toyed with. I had not the constitution or the will to put up with more. "Good day to you, Holmes. I shall see you on my return." At this, Holmes gave a tight and humourless smile, expressing his scepticism, that I should return at all.

 

Ah, that was his game then. Well, let him believe it, I thought. More would be my satisfaction when I return and Holmes finds he cannot so easily read me.

 

After discussing my temporary absence with Mrs Hudson, I took my valise and left Baker Street, stopping on the way to deposit the cheque with with my bank and telegraph ahead, and I headed out of London on the overnight sleeper to Coldstream.

 

* * *

 

The landscape was indeed striking at this time of year. The dawn light had turned the hills a blazing orange by the time I rose from my bunk in my sleeper carriage. I took this hour to enjoy the relative peace and the scenery from my carriage window, rather than dwell on the day ahead.

 

I breakfasted at Coldstream station while I waited for my connection, and took a further train further north, eventually ending my journey at ----.

 

My cousin Frances was waiting outside the station with a pony and trap, wrapped almost head to toe in woollen blankets against the cold. I wondered that my uncle had not made the journey, instead sending a lady unaccompanied. Though I was, all the same, relieved to see only her. Frances had an easy and companionable manner, and we could talk freely in a way we would not have been permitted had we not been by ourselves.

 

I walked up to the trap, and for an unsteady moment Frances did not recognise me. When she did her face fell; indeed she seemed to be in a state of some distress. "Oh, John," she exclaimed, climbing down from the trap. In that moment I saw myself as she must have just seen me, a relative stranger to my former self, the terrible thinness, the cane I used to get myself about on long journeys; though I was a man of eight and twenty, I occasionally looked more than twice that age, or at the very least I had the weariness.

 

Though unsettled, I smiled for my cousin as I embraced her. "There, Frances, what's all this?"

 

She gave me a tight squeeze, then mercifully released me. "When you told us you had been ill, I didn't think - well I had no idea..."

 

"It's not as bad as all that." I called upon my best bedside manner. "Getting stronger every day, I can assure you."

 

"Did they not feed you in hospital?"

 

"Indeed they did their very best, I'm afraid the fault with that lies entirely with me."

 

We both clambered into the trap, Frances having to help me up much to my acute embarrassment, and we set away to my uncle's cottage under a bright, cold sky. I took in the countryside around me. Frances observed me doing so. "Why John, anybody would presume that you missed this."

 

I laughed at that. "Very much, though I did not realise how so until this moment."

 

"Such a shame, that this is the circumstance which you come home." Frances guided the trap round the country lanes. She had picked up the skill very well. I hesitated, but did it pick up the thread of conversation pertaining to Henry.

 

"And where is my uncle? Why has he not accompanied you? Or come himself?"

 

"Think I am not capable of driving a trap three miles from my house?"

 

"No, indeed! I was just thinking what an accomplished horsewoman you’d become."

 

A rather derisive snort from Frances. "Hardly. And father is making arrangements for the funeral tomorrow. He is quite busy, and asked me to fetch you up."

 

"I am surprised he would allow you to ride about unchaperoned."

 

"Well I believe that he thinks that if I am ever to leave the house and get out from under his feet on occasion then certain certain lapses in correct decorum needed to be made." She wore a mocking expression. "Or he has simply given up all hope of finding me a match and intends to let me run wild."

 

Frances had reached her thirtieth year. She had never expressed an interest in a good marriage, or indeed in a bad one. She had, as a child, been the very picture of female virtue, only in coming of age had she started bristling against the presumed role for a young woman. Frances remained at home, unattached and looking rather comfortable with the situation.

 

We sat in silence for a while longer, losing ourselves to the rattle of the cart and relative peace of that moment. It seemed a shame to pierce it but a question had been sitting in my mind since yesterday evening. "Are we burying Henry here? Not in Edinburgh?"

 

"Yes, Father insisted on that."

 

"It is a pity, he loved Edinburgh."

 

"Rather too late to rearrange, I'm afraid. Even if it were not, you would have had to have argued the point with him."

 

I nodded. "Still I might mention it."

 

Frances looked at me. "I do not see what that would achieve, John."

 

* * *

 

The agedness of the family cottage was striking. We rounded the corner into the drive. It had, of course, not weathered significantly in ten years, but time away had made me more keen to it. The roof sagged inwards, as if it could barely support the weight of the slates. Climbing vines worked their way around the stonework, though very little of the foliage remained, leaving a structure of twisted grey branches and a few tremulous red leaves still hanging fast.

 

Frances pulled the cart up round the back of the building. I, having spent several years being raised here with Henry and Frances, considered the place as much as any a home, and I refused to stand on ceremony now as a guest. Frances lead me through the kitchen door and we found Uncle Richard at the kitchen table, sleeves rolled to the elbow, studying an array of papers. He looked up at me and though he started, a similar shock to Frances', he rose from the table and embraced me warmly, before holding me by the shoulders and appraising me. "You have been very ill, I fear."

 

"Quite on the mend", I said lightly.

 

"Good." Uncle Richard patted one shoulder, then released me and returned to the table. "Good old John, always strong as an ox! No surprise Afghanistan wasn’t able to fell you."

 

"Yes, despite all its best efforts." I agreed softly, but not quite as lightly now. I lowered myself into a chair and could feel both sets of eyes studying my careful movements.

 

Uncle Richard, a tall, broad man who wore his beard long and his hair in a severe centre parting, had the build and a way of twisting his mouth that reminded me very strongly of my father. However his temperament and manner were as opposite to my father as night was to day. My uncle was forthright where my father had been dreamy; sober in appearance and speech where my father had been decidedly not so. It had been my uncle who had swooped in to take control of our little family when I was a boy of twelve, Henry fifteen. He had very much raised me from that point onwards. I had taken to the change a little better than Henry ever had, perhaps for being that bit younger. Henry had never quite - it had never sat well with him.

 

“John?”

 

I looked up to find both sets of eyes upon me, watching to see what I would do, waiting for, well I did not know.

 

“Where is Henry?”

 

Uncle Richard lowered the paper he had been holding, and nodded. He scraped his chair back, a surprisingly violent noise in the muffled quiet. “Come, I will take you to him.”

 

* * *

 

They had put pennies over Henry’s eyes. The casket was opened so that I could see the body. I had thought that I would not recognise him, but perhaps that was just a wish on my part to make the whole business less terrible. It was indeed my brother laid before me, but not quite - or rather, not enough.

 

“Frances wrote that he…” I found my voice trailing away as I could not quite get the words out of my throat and past my lips. My uncle stood behind me.

 

“He drank himself into unconsciousness. Had a fit. Choked.” It was said with such clarity and objectiveness we could have almost been looking at a body on the slab in the dissection room. ‘ _Now Watson_ ’, I could almost hear him say from behind me. ‘ _We will start with opening the sternum’_.

 

In fact I could not be sure he had not said anything. “What?”

 

“You were away for a long time. His condition deteriorated. But my god, John, you must have known that he drank.”

 

“Yes, I…” I looked at Henry again, cool and impassive in the open casket with his dull copper eyes; he looked bored of us. “Yes I knew.”

 

“I would have given him my help - I tried. But he didn't want it. I will blame myself for that.” His voice had become deeper, quieter, a slow rumble from behind me and though I could not see his face it was evident the grief that lay behind the timbre. “You must believe that, John.”

 

After a bright morning, the clouds had rolled in. The weak sun struggled to make itself known from behind them but the light that filtered through was grey and wan. Henry’s colour, already with a paleness that was not found in the living, looked almost blue. He was between myself and the window, and as I backed away he became a silhouetted shape against the dark sky, as still and patient as the surrounding furniture.

 

“If he did not want your help…” I said it quietly, disconnected from my own voice, looking down upon myself speaking as a terrible puppet master pulling on strings that only caused the creature below me to bob and jerk about. “Then I do not see what could you have done.”

 

“He was my child. As much as Frances is. As much as you are.”

 

“No, he wasn't.” If I had better mastery of the strings which were holding my body upright at that moment, I would not have said it. I turned my head but did not quite look at him. “Obviously.”

 

For a moment, he did not speak, and I took the brief opportunity afforded by this to walk past him out into the hallway, along to the kitchen. I did not know quite what I had said or why. And there was a roiling in my stomach which I could not identify as anger or nausea. As it was I walked out the kitchen door and vomited into a flower bed. All I brought up was bile, which I thought appropriate, as I spat the bitterness out of my mouth.

 

I had become so weak. A day did not go by where I was constantly reminded how much more feeble my constitution was. I was clutching at my knees, still spitting but in reality frightened to stand up lest I were to swoon.

 

Uncle Richard came through the door and stood beside me a moment, looking me over, then turned his gaze to the hills beyond which had started to lose their summits to the wispy clouds. The rain began to patter against my back as he spoke.

 

“You are right - he was not my son. He had too much of his father in him. Always.” He took a step closer. “He wasn’t like you…”

 

The roiling within my stomach, the feeling of being utterly out of control of my own movements came over me like a wave. I watched in interest as I stood straight; ignoring the dizziness that came with the motion or rather barrelling through it in a controlled fall, I rushed at him. He stepped back more out of shock than for my frail strength, but I had a forearm across his throat and had backed him against the doorframe.

 

I could not even put into thoughts why I was so incensed with him, why my temper had broken so hysterically. I wanted to bellow words in his face, but - what. All that came out of my mouth was a strange, strangled noise. “ _You_ …”

 

My uncle took me by the shoulders and shoved me away. I came at him again. His arm shot out; the back of his hand connected across my cheek, and I tumbled.

 

* * *

 

After this incident I was put to bed. I felt so thoroughly empty after my outburst that I was as meek and biddable as a child, being led to my old bedroom and sat on the edge of the small single bed. The springs groaned with lack of use as I lay myself down, and though it was embarrassing I did not stop Frances from unlacing and pulling off my boots. I had much experience in being an invalid, and it was an easy habit to pick up again.

 

I was left, told that I needed sleep, but for a long while I lay there with eyes open, feeling the hot pressure in my cheek where I had been struck. I took in the details of a room I had not stayed in with any frequency since I was eighteen years old, and listened to the spatter of the rain on the window.

 

I thought of Holmes, strangely, most probably lying listlessly on the sofa back at Baker Street, waiting for another problematical case to come walking into the drawing room to bring him roaring back to life.

 

Perversely, I wanted a drink.

 

* * *

 

It was not fortuitous that that night was one of those where I woke myself mid cry, backed up against the wall. But after the day that had preceded, was it really a surprise? My uncle stood over me, calling my name, one hand shaking my injured shoulder, the shock of which must have snapped me back into mundane reality.

 

“John, can you hear me boy.”

 

I looked up at him. My breath was heavy and I was sweating. I wondered how long I had been under.

 

Uncle Richard was looking at me with some fear. He bent forwards, looked closely into my eyes. “Can you hear me.”

 

I did not even attempt to speak an answer, just nodded - a short and shivering movement. I swallowed and my throat was raw. I had been shouting out orders into this quiet Scottish bedroom.

 

Whenever I had done something similar to this in Baker Street I had woken to an empty room. Once or twice, Holmes had popped his head around the door a minute or so after I had woken myself and enquired if I had wanted anything from the kitchen, seeing as he was making a jaunt down there. I believe he left me alone out of some attempt at consideration, for he had no compunction about bursting into my rooms unannounced otherwise. He seemed to not quite have the capacity to speak to me about these night terrors, or maybe lacked the interest. But I had gratefully received his placid acceptance of them in his life, and I wished that I were alone now, rather than look into the troubled, considering face of my Uncle.

 

“I have not been well,” I muttered stupidly.

 

“Indeed you have not, murmured my uncle, heard but not seen in the darkness.

 


End file.
